Part 1062

"It was important for the frontiersmen to take the Lake Posts from the British; but it was even more important to wrest from the Spaniards the free navigation of the Mississippi. While the Lake Posts were held by the garrisons of a foreign power, the work of settling the northwestern territory was bound to go forward slowly and painfully; but while the navigation of the Mississippi was barred, even the settlements already founded could not attain to their proper prosperity and importance. … The Westerners were right in regarding as indispensable the free navigation of the Mississippi. They were right also in their determination ultimately to acquire the control of the whole river, from the source to the mouth. However, the Westerners wished more than the privilege of sending down stream the products of their woods and pastures and tilled farms. {3296} They had already begun to cast longing eyes on the fair Spanish possessions. … Every bold, lawless, ambitious leader among the frontier folk dreamed of wresting from the Spaniard some portion of his rich and ill-guarded domain. It was not alone the attitude of the frontiersmen towards Spain that was novel, and based upon a situation for which there was little precedent. Their relations with one another, with their brethren of the seaboard, and with the Federal Government, likewise had to be adjusted without much chance of profiting by antecedent experience. Many phases of these relations between the people who stayed at home and those who wandered off to make homes, between the frontiersmen as they formed young States, and the Central Government representing the old States, were entirely new, and were ill-understood by both parties. … The attitude towards the Westerners of certain portions of the population in the older States, and especially in the northeastern States, was one of unreasoning jealousy and suspicion; and though this mental attitude rarely crystallized into hostile deeds, its very existence, and the knowledge that it did exist, embittered the men of the West. … In the northeastern States, and in New England especially, this feeling showed itself for two generations after the close of the Revolutionary War. On the whole the New Englanders have exerted a more profound and wholesome influence upon the development of our common country than has ever been exerted by any other equally numerous body of our people. They have led the nation in the path of civil liberty and sound governmental administration. But too often they have viewed the nation's growth and greatness from a narrow and provincial standpoint, and have grudgingly acquiesced in, rather than led the march towards, continental supremacy. In shaping the nation's policy for the future their sense of historic perspective seemed imperfect. … The extreme representatives of this northeastern sectionalism not only objected to the growth of the West at the time now under consideration, but even avowed a desire to work it harm, by shutting the Mississippi, so as to benefit the commerce of the Atlantic States. … These intolerant extremists not only opposed the admission of the young western States into the Union, but at a later date actually announced that the annexation by the United States of vast territories beyond the Mississippi offered just cause for the secession of the northeastern States. Even those who did not take such an advanced ground felt an unreasonable dread lest the West might grow to overtop the East in power. … A curious feature of the way many honest men looked at the West was their inability to see how essentially transient were some of the characteristics to which they objected. Thus they were alarmed at the turbulence and the lawless shortcomings of various kinds which grew out of the conditions of frontier settlement and sparse population. They looked with anxious foreboding to the time when the turbulent and lawless people would be very numerous, and would form a dense and powerful population; failing to see that in exact proportion as the population became dense, the conditions which caused the qualities to which they objected would disappear. Even the men who had too much good sense to share these fears, even men as broadly patriotic as Jay, could not realize the extreme rapidity of western growth. Kentucky and Tennessee grew much faster than any of the old frontier colonies had ever grown; and from sheer lack of experience, eastern statesmen could not realize that this rapidity of growth made the navigation of the Mississippi a matter of immediate and not of future interest to the West. … While many of the people on the eastern seaboard thus took an indefensible position in reference to the trans-Alleghany settlements, in the period immediately succeeding the Revolution, there were large bodies of the population of these same settlements, including very many of their popular leaders, whose own attitude towards the Union was, if anything, more blameworthy. They were clamorous about their rights, and were not unready to use veiled threats of disunion when they deemed these rights infringed; but they showed little appreciation of their own duties to the Union. … They demanded that the United States wrest from the British the Lake Posts, and from the Spaniards the navigation of the Mississippi. Yet they seemed incapable of understanding that if they separated from the Union they would thereby forfeit all chance of achieving the very purposes they had in view, because they would then certainly be at the mercy of Britain, and probably, at least for some time, at the mercy of Spain also. They opposed giving the United States the necessary civil and military power, although it was only by the possession and exercise of such power that it would be possible to secure for the westerners what they wished. In all human probability, the whole country round the Great Lakes would still be British territory, and the mouth of the Mississippi still in the hands of some European power, had the folly of the separatists won the day and had the West been broken up into independent states. … This final triumph of the Union party in these first-formed frontier States was fraught with immeasurable good."

_T. Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, volume 3, chapter 3._

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1783-1787; and LOUISIANA: A. D. 1785-1800.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1785-1787. First troubles and dealings with the Barbary pirates.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1785-1801.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1786-1787. Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts.

See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1786-1787.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787. The, Ordinance for the Government of the Northwest Territory. Exclusion of Slavery forever.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D. 1787; also, EDUCATION, MODERN: AMERICA: A. D. 1785-1880.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1787. The framing of the Federal Constitution. The Union constructed of compromises.

The convention of delegates appointed to revise the Articles of Confederation, but which took upon itself the task of framing anew a Federal Constitution for the States, assembled at Philadelphia on the 25th of May, 1787, eleven days later than the day appointed for its meeting. "The powers conferred by the several states were not uniform. Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey appointed their delegates 'for the purpose of revising the Federal Constitution;' North Carolina, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Georgia 'to decide upon the most effectual means to remove the defects of the Federal Union;' New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut 'for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation;' South Carolina and Maryland 'to render the Federal Constitution entirely adequate to the actual situation.' {3297} Rhode Island held aloof. She was governed by a class of men who wanted to pay their debts in paper money, and she did not wish to surrender her power to collect duties upon the goods that came into her port. The trade of Newport at that day surpassed that of New York. Connecticut came in reluctantly, and New Hampshire late in July, 1787. … Washington was made president of the convention. … Many names great in the revolutionary struggle were absent from the roll of delegates. John and Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, were not there. Patrick Henry of Virginia refused to attend. Thomas Jefferson and John Jay were absent from the country. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, however, were there. … Among the younger men was James Madison of Virginia. … Alexander Hamilton came from New York. … Charles C. Pinckney was a delegate from South Carolina. … James Wilson of Pennsylvania was a Scotchman. He surpassed all others in his exact knowledge of the civil and common law, and the law of nations. … Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman came from Connecticut. … Many of the 55 delegates shared Hamilton's contempt for a democracy, but the strength they would repose in a government they preferred to retain in the states. … The first business of the convention was the adoption of rules. Each state was to have one vote. Such was the rule in the Confederate Congress. Seven states made a quorum. The convention was to sit with closed doors, and everything was to be kept secret: nothing was to be given to the public except the completed work. This injunction of secrecy was never removed. Fortunately James Madison kept a pretty full account of the debates and proceedings, all in his own hand."

_J. S. Landon, Constitutional History and Government of the United States, lecture 3._

"Madison tells us in his report of these debates that previous to the opening of the Convention it had been a subject of discussion among the members present, as to how the States should vote in the Convention. Several of the members from Pennsylvania had urged that the large States unite in refusing to the small States an equal vote, but Virginia, believing this to be injudicious if not unjust, ' discountenanced and stilled the project.' On the 29th the real business of the Convention was opened by Edmund Randolph, who as Governor of Virginia was put forward as spokesman by his colleagues. He began by saying that as the Convention had originated from Virginia, and the delegation from this State supposed that some proposition was expected from them, the task had been imposed on him. After enumerating the defects of the Confederation, he detailed the remedy proposed. This latter was set forth in fifteen resolutions and was called afterwards the Virginia plan of government. Charles Pinckney from South Carolina had also a draft of a federal government, which was read and like the former referred to a committee of the whole House. … The Committee of the Whole … debated from day to day the resolutions contained in the Virginia plan, and on the 13th of June they reported nineteen resolutions based upon those of Virginia, forming a system of government in outline. On the following day Mr. Paterson, of New Jersey, asked for time to prepare another plan founded on the Articles of Confederation. This was submitted to the Convention on the 15th. The Virginia and the New Jersey plan were contrasted briefly by one of the members: Virginia plan proposes two branches in the legislature, Jersey, a single legislative body; Virginia, the legislative powers derived from the people, Jersey, from the States; Virginia, a single executive, Jersey, more than one; Virginia, a majority of the legislature can act, Jersey, a small majority can control; Virginia, the legislature can legislate on all national concerns, Jersey, only on limited objects; Virginia, legislature to negative all State laws, Jersey, giving power to the executive to compel obedience by force; Virginia, to remove the executive by impeachment, Jersey, on application of a majority of the States; Virginia, for the establishment of inferior judiciary tribunals, Jersey, no provision. Neither of these plans commended themselves to men like Hamilton, who wanted a strong government, and were afraid of democracy or giving power to the people. He thought the Virginia plan 'but pork still with a little change of the sauce.' The Articles of Confederation amended, as in the New Jersey plan, set forth a government approved of by the opposite wing of the Convention, consisting of men like Lansing, who professed an ultra devotion to the rights and autonomy of the States. … The Convention did not go again into committee of the whole, but continued to debate the nineteen resolutions from the 19th of June until the 23d of July. Some of these were referred to grand committees, consisting of one member from each State, or they were referred to select committees consisting of five members."

_K. M. Rowland, Life of George Mason, volume 2, chapter 4._

"The plan presented by Mr. Patterson, called the New Jersey plan, was concerted and arranged between the deputations of that State, of Delaware, of New York, and of Connecticut, with the individual cooperation of Mr. Luther Martin, one of the delegates of Maryland. The extreme jealousy … manifested by the representatives of the two first-named States with regard to the equal suffrage of the States in the common councils of the Confederacy, was the principal source of their aversion to the plan reported by the committee of the whole. The delegates of Connecticut, and Messrs. Lansing and Yates,—forming a majority of the delegation of New York,—united with the deputations of New Jersey and Delaware, not so much from an exclusive attachment to the principle of the sovereignty and equality of the States, as from the policy of preserving the existing framework of the confederation, and of simply vesting in Congress, as then organized, a few additional powers. It was under the influence of these mixed political views that the New Jersey plan was conceived and prepared. It proposed to vest in the existing Congress,—a single body in which all the States had an equal suffrage,—in addition to the powers already given to it by the articles of confederation, that of raising revenue by imposts and stamp and postage duties, and also that of passing acts for the regulation of commerce with foreign nations and between the States; leaving the enforcement of all such acts, in the first instance, to the State courts, with an ultimate appeal to the tribunals of the United States. {3298} Whenever requisitions on the States for contributions should be made, and any State should fail to comply with such requisitions within a specified time, Congress was to be authorized to direct their collection in the non-complying States, and to pass the requisite acts for that purpose. None of the foregoing powers, however, were to be exercised by Congress without the concurrence of a certain number of the States, exceeding a bare majority of the whole. The plan also proposed the organization of a Federal executive and a Federal judiciary. … It was, finally, provided that if any State, or any body of men in any State, shall oppose or prevent the carrying into execution any act of Congress passed in virtue of the powers granted to that body, or any treaty made and ratified under the authority of the United States, the Federal executive shall be authorized to call forth the power of the confederated States, or so much thereof as may be necessary, to enforce and compel an obedience to the acts, or an observance of the treaties, whose execution shall have been so opposed or prevented. Such were the salient features of the plan now brought forward as a substitute for the Virginia propositions, as reported by the committee of the whole. … In the progress of the discussion upon the two plans, Colonel Hamilton, of New York, made an elaborate speech, declaring himself to be opposed to both, and suggesting a third and more absolute plan, which he thought was alone adequate to the exigencies of the country. He frankly avowed his distrust of both republican and federal government, under any modification. He entered into a minute analysis of the various sources and elements of political power, in order to show that all these would be on the side of the State governments, so long as a separate political organization of the States was maintained, and would render them an over-match for any general government that could be established, unless a 'complete sovereignty' was vested in the latter. He thought it essential, therefore, to the ends of a good and efficient government of the whole country, that the State governments, with their vast and extensive apparatus, should be extinguished; though 'he did not mean,' he said, 'to shock public opinion by proposing such a measure.' He also expressed his despair of the practicability of establishing a republican government over so extensive a country as the United States. He was sensible, at the same time, that it would be unwise to propose one of any other form. Yet 'he had no scruple,' he said, 'in declaring that, in his private opinion, the British government was the best in the world, and that he doubted much whether any thing short of it would do in America.' He descanted upon the securities against injustice, violence, and innovation, afforded, in the English system, by the permanent constitution of the House of Lords, and by the elevated and independent position of the monarch. He thence deduced the necessity of as permanent a tenure as public opinion in this country would bear, of the leading branches of the new government. 'Let one branch of the legislature,' he said, 'hold their places for life, or at least during good behavior. Let the executive also be for life.' In concluding, he expressed his conviction that 'a great progress was going on in the public mind; that the people will, in time, be unshackled from their prejudices; and, whenever that happens, they will themselves not be satisfied at stopping where the plan brought forward by Mr. Randolph [the Virginia plan] would place them, but would be ready to go as far, at least, as he proposed.' He then read a plan of government he had prepared, which, he said, he did not submit as a proposition to the convention, but as giving a correct sketch of his ideas, and to suggest the amendment which he should probably offer to the Virginia plan in the future stages of its consideration. … The convention now had presented for their consideration three distinct schemes of government: one purely Federal, founded upon the idea of preserving undiminished the sovereignty and equality of the States, and of constituting a special political agency in Congress for certain purposes, but still under the dependence and control of the States; another of a consolidated character, bottomed on the principle of a virtual annihilation of the State sovereignties and the creation of a central government, with a supreme and indefinite control over both individuals and communities; the third a mixed and balanced system, resting upon an agreed partition of the powers of sovereignty between the States and the Union,—one portion to be vested in the Union for certain objects of common and national concern, the residue retained by the States for the regulation of the general mass of their interior and domestic interests. … On the 19th of June … Mr. King, of Massachusetts, moved that 'the committee do now rise, and report that they do not agree to the propositions offered by the Honorable Mr. Patterson; and that they report to the House the resolutions offered by the Honorable Mr. Randolph, heretofore reported from a committee of the whole.' The motion was carried by the votes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in the affirmative,—New York, New Jersey, and Delaware voting in the negative; and Maryland, divided."

_W. C. Rives, Life and Times of James Madison, chapter 29._

"It appeared," wrote Madison, in a letter to Jefferson, October 24th "to be the sincere and unanimous wish of the Convention to cherish and preserve the Union of the States. No proposition was made, no suggestion was thrown out, in favor of a partition of the Empire into two or more Confederacies. It was generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a confederation of Sovereign States. A voluntary observance of the federal law by all the members could never be hoped for. A compulsive one could evidently never be reduced to practice, and if it could, involved equal calamities to the innocent and the guilty, the necessity of a military force, both obnoxious and dangerous, and, in general, a scene resembling much more a civil war than the administration of a regular Government. Hence was embraced the alternative of a Government which, instead of operating on the States, should operate without their intervention on the individuals composing them; and hence the change in the principle and proportion of representation. {3299} This ground-work being laid, the great objects which presented themselves were: 1. To unite a proper energy in the Executive, and a proper stability in the Legislative departments, with the essential characters of Republican Government: 2. To draw a line of demarkation which would give to the General Government every power requisite for general purposes, and leave to the States every power which might be most beneficially administered by them. 3. To provide for the different interests of different parts of the Union. 4. To adjust the clashing pretensions of the large and small States.